Pentagon Renovation Program

The Pentagon Renovation Program or PENREN was a long-term project by the United States Department of Defense to perform a complete slab-to-slab renovation of The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The program began in the 1990s, and was completed in June 2011.

The full-scale renovation became necessary because by the mid-1990s, the Pentagon had never undergone a major renovation, and building systems had deteriorated beyond repair, requiring complete replacement. Additionally, the presence of asbestos-containing materials throughout the building made any repairs or other work to the building highly disruptive.

The Defense Authorization Act of 1991 transferred control of the Pentagon Reservation from the General Services Administration to the Department of Defense, and established the Pentagon Reservation Maintenance Revolving Fund, designed to fund Pentagon renovations. This move enabled the Secretary of Defense to determine rent rates for Pentagon tenants to help fund the renovation.

The basic information system infrastructure in the Pentagon was installed long before the advent of personal computers, facsimile machines, video teleconferencing, and digital telephone service, and has evolved without a design plan. In 1943, when the Pentagon was built, there was one telephone for every three employees. Over the last 57 years, new information technology capabilities have emerged and the new systems have been laid on top of the old. Over time, this merging of technology has become unmanageable and not easily upgraded. As requirements emerged, facilities and systems were added with little or no regard to existing capabilities or long-term requirements. The individual military departments and agencies engineered and installed equipment and cables to meet their immediate specific needs.

The objective of the ITS effort is to provide cost-effective services and capabilities that will best serve the needs of the Pentagon tenants and Department of Defense senior leadership by leveraging technology advancements and designing and developing integrated systems. The information technology modernization is being accomplished in conjunction with the building’s wedge by wedge renovation.

The renovated Pentagon contains over 1,700 miles (2,700 km) of cabling, more than 100,000 voice, data, and video drops, 50,000 data faceplates, 30,000 tenants and their IT assets, and 16 consolidated server rooms, down from 70 server rooms before.

When the Washington Metro's Pentagon station originally opened, access to the Pentagon from the station was gained through a direct underground entrance. An outdoor bus station also existed at the station's street entrance.

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